Clayton Bartolo terminates Hillman’s MGA contracts

No leniency for industry rule breakers in show of no tolerance

In a show of zero tolerance, new Parliamentary Secretary Clayton Bartolo has moved swiftly to terminate Adrian Hillman’s consultancy contracts with the Malta Gaming Authority. 

Hillman, a former Allied Newspapers managing director, was called out by the Parliamentary Secretary in a tweet posted last night for taking payments intended for a private company through consultancies from the gaming authority. 

‘I’ve ordered this contract to be terminated immediately as a show of zero tolerance to potentially damaging behaviour to such a crucial industry,’ the Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services and Digital Economy said.

Hillman was initially recruited to the €48,000-a-year-post to provide strategic communication services, reputation management, and public relations to the MGA. His appointment came as the result of a direct order given to him by the Office of the Prime Minister, and despite the fact that he was also the subject of a magisterial inquiry on claims of money laundering.

Mr Hillman resigned his post as managing director of Allied Newspapers, publishers of Times of Malta, soon after his name surfaced in the Panama Papers leaks. 

The leaks revealed that Mr Hillman owned secret companies in the British Virgin Islands, similar to the ones set up in Panama by Nexia BT’s Brian Tonna for Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi.  

A series of transactions for some €650,000 between Mr Hillman and the former Prime Minister’s chief of staff were also exposed by the late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

He had also been appointed to the Board of Trustees of the American University of Malta by former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat in 2018.

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